I FEAR FOR OUR DAUGHTERS

“Zee, with all the Mollis-tape hype, I’m surprised you haven’t written anything about it…” One of my friends commented.

“Well, it’s a tricky issue, didn’t know which side to take.” I replied.

“Oh yeah? What do you mean?” Her.

“Well, I couldn’t tell whether it was rape or just another ‘drama-ful’ incident for the sake of publicity.” Me.

“You really think so?” Her.

“Well, yeah, plus I kinda didn’t want to get involved in that heated controversy. It might have gotten messy.” Me.

“When has that ever stopped you?” Her.

“Since when did you start holding back or even ignoring a chance to speak your mind?” Another her.

Since when indeed, I thought. This was me and my friends a few days ago, when the Mollis audio tape came up in our conversation. See, they believe me to be the Conscience Mistress. And as most of you may know, I am q.u.i.t.e opinionated, plus I hardly ever pass up a chance to stand strong to my beliefs. In fact, one of my close friends called me ‘The Idealist’ of our group. LOL. *side note* Btw Mary, I was actually flattered… So they have been wondering what I thought about the whole Mollis drama. Well, here’s to Mary, Jane, Rhodah and all the ladies out there.

After going through all the tweets and blog posts related to this saga, I am worried sick for our daughters, because of my findings of what my society finds amusing. No matter how much I tried to pay no attention to the ‘Mollis’ audio commotion, the universe just couldn’t let me. For a number of days, that was all I heard and read about. Every time I went through my twitter timeline, logged in to my Facebook account, and turned on the radio, topics about ‘Mollis’ have been all the rage. Sadly, most of what my eyes and ears have been exposed to, has not been honourable. Numerous tweets made fun of the incident, and I believed it to be just the usual young, hot-blooded banters. It was only after I read a particularly undignified feedback-post about the audio tape from a reputable and often-credible media site (and of course, the conversation I had with my friends), that I decided I had to put my two cents in.

According to the public consensus, the ‘good thing’ about the audio clip people found amusing was that the sexual deed was probably consensual and that she enjoyed the session because, apparently, she had been searching for the boy earlier. The other aspect that masses in the social media seem to sing praises to (until today) is about the said boy’s ‘energy’. Of course I found both points debatable because for point One: I don’t know about you but if I was eager about ‘Mollis’ and enjoyed his ‘sportsmanship’ there are a lot better flowery words I’d use, and none of them is “Nimechoka” or “I surrender”. As for point two: one word, Viagra. (I’m just saying. I mean who knows…) However, what got me overly concerned, was the countless non-debatable bad things about the recording that came into light.

The lady in question seemed to have been quite intoxicated whereas the man, not so much- if at all. I fear for our daughters because it reminded me that there exist men out there who may take advantage of our drunken girls. And worse, that our daughters would simply get drunk around people they do not fully trust.

As I said earlier, the deed might have been of mutual consent, but again what if it wasn’t. The aspect of whether the girl gave in to it and actually enjoyed it is disputable, since she wouldn’t have claimed exhaustion, persistently, throughout the recording, don’t you think so.. So what if it really was rape? Just because she agreed to it yesterday, or three hours ago, doesn’t mean she is on board right now. Let’s face it, those were not words and sounds of a woman in pleasure. And for this, I fear for our daughter. I fear that she will get into relationships with a man who will not really care about her, as long as the arrangement pleases him. I fear for her because such men would not pause to confirm if she really means her pleas to stop or not. I fear for our daughters because there are men who actually believe that when a woman says “no” she means “yes.”

While a few women were worried that this could be rape caught on tape, other women joined the larger group that made fun of the event, and went ahead to make statements that publicly degraded women and supported a possible cruel act. I fear for our daughters, because they may come to have such women as their best friends.

Is it me or is sex all we talk about in the online society we live in. That we will only Briefly discuss events such as POTUS coming to our country, Global Entrepreneur Summits, our political stability, our state deploying more than three hundred medical personnel to go fight Ebola, or even a well-celebrated football game, but we’ll chatter For Days On End about matters to do with sex. So yes, I fear that no matter how intelligent, witty, sporty, funny and innovative our daughters will be, at the end of the day they will be reduced to just two words, ‘sexual beings.’

Even so, it wasn’t the video that struck me dumb, numb and glum, but the reactions that it brought out of it. I was forced to read posts, tweets, and memes that dishonored women, encouraged rape, and applauded men who do. And that, makes me want to lock up our daughters in their rooms and never let them out. Doesn’t it freak you out- even a little bit- that even though there are good people out there, a big part of their community would not have our little girls’ best interests at heart? That our daughters will be exposed to such unpleasant sentiments and watch their fellow females go through such embarrassing and degrading moments. I mean we moved from wife-battery, to publicly stripping them because of their choice of dress, now it’s defaming them because of the people they associate with, what next? Burning them on a stick because of the length of their braids??

To that lady in the audio recording, I do hope her best friend, brother, and father were not among the ones who got a kick out of this episode.